


What to do?

by Isaya



Series: Advent Calendar 2018 [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Having a Bad Day, Self-Reflection, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 14:04:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16834099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isaya/pseuds/Isaya
Summary: Dudley Dursley had a bad day and one of his neighbours' kids may be magical?





	What to do?

**Author's Note:**

> Day three.  
> I had an idea and it completely ran away from me and kinda turned into something else? idek.  
> I hope someone will enjoy it either way.

Could this day get any worse?

First, his car wouldn’t start in the morning and he’d had to walk 10 minutes to the nearest bus stop to take the bus and the tube to work instead. And that meant that he’d had no time to stop anywhere for breakfast and still arrived 20 minutes late, resulting in a lecture from his boss – which was unfair, he felt. After all it had been the first time he’d been late unlike Mr. Priddy who was late almost every second day.

Then a client had cancelled on him and he’d had to reschedule, sacrificing his day off. By the time lunch came around he was positively starving, and that never failed to make him feel guilty. Here he was, internally complaining about missing breakfast … how often had they made Harry miss a meal? He had no right to grumble.

So, by the time it was time for him to leave he was in a foul mood – which turned out to be a recipe for disaster as it was date night. Claire had noticed that he’d been preoccupied, of course she did; she was quite perceptive. And she hadn’t appreciated his not wanting to talk about it.

Date night turned into a fight and she ended up storming out of the pub even before their fish’n’chips arrived.

Well, at least she hadn’t screamed at him. Their fight had been intense but quiet – they’d both tried to avoid making a scene. True, she’d stormed out, but he’d seen other couples’ fights before that were way worse.

He just wasn’t sure how to reconcile with her. Because she was right, he never wanted to talk about anything remotely related to, well, _them_. For several reasons.

First, he wouldn’t even know how to go about it. Even if she’d believe him that magic existed, it’d be against _their_ laws to tell her about it and he wasn’t sure he wanted to break that law needlessly. And how would he explain how he knew? It wasn’t like he could prove anything. He was a muggle. He had no way to show her any magic to make her believe him and it wasn’t like he was in contact with Harry. He didn’t even have an address. Once a year, an owl arrived with a Christmas card and he sent one back but that had been the extent of it for the last few years.

And even if she believed him (and didn’t try to put him into a straight-jacket), what then? There was no way for him to know how she’d react. He’d like to think she’d be rational or, well, accepting (she was normally a very tolerant person, she had to be considering she dated him) but how could he be sure? Remembering how he grew up he doubted he would ever really trust someone to react favourably if it came up. And so he hoped it never would.

Aside from the whole magic issue, the truth was that he didn’t want to talk about it was that he was scared. _Ashamed._ He’d been a bully, a gang-leader and if things had been different, if they hadn’t run into these demented something somethings, he’d never realised it. He’d never known that he’d been a horrible person. After all, how could he?

The horrible, bad, evil person in his childhood home had always been Harry. Ironic, considering that he was actually the best person out of all of them – not that it was hard.

His parents had sung his praises no matter what, completely ignoring reality, and they’d taught him to do the same. After all, if something went wrong, they’d always blamed Harry. When he was young that had just been how things where. There was a point where he wondered how that worked. How when he broke something it was always Harry’s fault. (Not that he hadn’t ruthlessly taken advantage of it.) And then the whole magic revelation thing happened and of course, everything had been Harry’s fault. Someone tripped? Oh, they must’ve been cursed.

Ha. As if any of them had had any idea what a curse truly was. What magic was capable of. He still didn’t know much, didn’t want to know more, but it was enough. Enough to know that his childhood had been a lie – and how do you explain such a thing? It was enough to know that he’d never come across a wizard or witch that truly wanted to hurt him. Not even that big… that giant had truly hurt him. The pig’s tail had been humiliating, yes, but there’d been no pain involved.

And looking back, he recognized that the red heads had merely pranked him and not tried to (seriously) harm him.

But how could he explain to Claire, who already was wary of his parents, how they’d treated their nephew? How could he justify that? There was absolutely no way to do that. Even less if he didn’t want to bring magic into it, not that magic made it the slightest bit better or more justified.

He loved his parents, even if there were days where he didn’t like them very much. And he got the feeling that if he talked about it, he would have to choose between Claire and his parents. And he didn’t want to. He was scared to. Scared of who he would chose and what it would say about him, and… So he never spoke about it. To be honest, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever mentioned a cousin to her.

And would she even want to stay with him if she knew who he really was and what he was capable of? Maybe they’d been doomed from the beginning.

And to think that there was a point in the beginning where he thought that their main contention would be that she wanted children at some point and he had oh so many reasons why he never wanted any.

At least it wasn’t raining as he trudged home. There was a slight chill in the autumn air. It was refreshing and helped clear his head a little.

He’d just go home, drink an ale and watch some telly and write this day off as a bad one to be ignored (for now).

He was halfway into the newest episode of Doctor Who when he heard yelling. He sighed. His neighbours were at it again. He wondered what happened (he didn’t want to know though). They’d been a nice, if quiet family. The old biddy across the street had nagged and worried about the kids being adopted and that it’d only lead to trouble but up until six weeks ago they’d been almost perfect neighbours for the last two years. Quiet but friendly, not noisy like some could be. He liked them.

He liked them well enough that he’d actually babysat for them once in an emergency. He’d been freaking out the whole time but both the two kids, who’d been six and eight at the time, and he himself had survived the experience just fine. Didn’t change the fact that he didn’t want to babysit anyone ever (again).

Dimly he wondered if he should go over there sometime and ask if everything was alright but, it was none of his business and honestly, he had no interest in getting involved there. Still, it would be nice if they could go back to being nice and quiet instead of holding screaming matches at least twice a week.

But when his telly cut off 10 minutes into whatever show aired after Doctor Who – he’d stopped paying attention and just let it wash over him – along with the lights with no warning apart from a strange crackle and it suddenly dead quiet after the yelling next door had gotten louder and louder, he had the very bad feeling that he would have to get involved after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Same deal as the last two. Not edited, not beta-ed. Only spellchecked.


End file.
